Thinkpads Forum

I'm a relative linux noob and this my fourth try with Linux and I think it's gonna stick. LinuxMint 11 LXDE is fast, beautiful and wonderfully functional.

My first foray into Linux was Corel Linux off a free cd-rom a decade or so ago. That was when desktop linux was first starting to gain traction and the distro was nice, but confusing to me to customize. It could have been my patience or technical expertise at the time.

I tried Libranet 2.6(?) after that. That was pretty good and the software update center was a big step in usability, but the Windows productivity software was much more advanced at the time.

Years later I got sick of cleaning viruses and malware off my mother-in-laws Dell desktop and installed Xubuntu 8.10 (or something like that) on it. Learned to install a custom repository source, apt get, set up a custom printer driver, set up her internet connection, preferred browser, etc.... and didn't have to touch that thing for three years until she gave it away.

I bought a Thinkpad T60 for kicks off eBay and decided to dualboot WinXP and Linux. Was going to try the latest release of Xubuntu, but decided to try LinuxMint LXDE based on favorable reviews and the lightweight desktop. Boy was that a great decision!

Everything works out of the box (with the exception of the middle scroll button) and it is lightning fast. Installed Gigolo to map to my NAS, installed Chrome, uninstalled AbiWord + GNUMeric, installed LibreOffice for MS Office compatibility and I'm good to go.

Just today, I installed some KDE picture manager that looked great. Uninstalled it as I forgot LXDE plays better with GNOME packages and for some reason decided to manually uninstall a bunch of packages with the intent of keeping things small and lean. Deleted a few packages too many and lost my wireless connectivity. FUBAR'd a bunch of stuff trying to fix it including my MBR and spent a couple of hours figuring it out and reinstalling LinuxMint.

This is EXACTLY the experience I was looking for and one of the reasons I got the T60. Breaking things is the best way to learn.

BTW, I sold this exact same T60 model 3 years ago for $550. I bought this one for $150 delivered with a 500gb hard drive, 2GB ram and 1400x1050 14" LCD. This thing is noticeably faster in almost all scenarios than my office dell laptop with an i5 processor and 4gb of RAM on WindowsXP and all the bloated security software. Hehe, I love being a couple generations behind and maximizing the old hardware.

Let me know if there are any packages I should try out and install. Still looking for a good Picasa-like photo management program and a simple Paint Shop Pro-like photo editor. The GIMP is too much like Photoshop.

Thomcat wrote:Let me know if there are any packages I should try out and install. Still looking for a good Picasa-like photo management program and a simple Paint Shop Pro-like photo editor. The GIMP is too much like Photoshop.

I'd suggest to try out the programs "f-spot" and "shotwell" for your photo management purposes. I prefer to stick to "geeqie" and manage things manually instead. For image editing, i guess, there is nothing more versatile then GIMP.

Since Mint is based on Debian/Ubuntu, you can search the package database for some relevant catchwords like this: Try some other keywords, and if you get too many matches then just filter things via the grep command: To show a detailed description for a specific package:[full output intentionally cut]

Thank you for those suggestions.

The one piece of software that I discovered this time around and love as well is Gigolo. Quick and easy way to mount my network shares. I also installed an LXDE Menu Editor. No more tweaking txt files! See:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=175&t=83926

I noticed that my Thinkpad T60 laptop's fan runs at a steady rate at all temps/cpu cycles. Is this normal? Is there a way to get the cpu fan to run based on temperature of the cpu or system?

Does this kernel have this ability built-in? Or do I need to install additional packages?

I've searched and found a Thinkpad Fan Control program/package, but most of the instructions are for Ubuntu/Debian GNOME. Before I try it out, does anyone know how to adapt it for LinuxMint 11 LXDE?

The most helpful reference I've found is here for Ubuntu 10.x:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1586094

EDITED: Removed details from the above link to save space. Please see Elchund's suggestion below for a newer package that installs perfectly in LinuxMint 11 LXDE.

I run Ubuntu 11.10 on a T61 and X60, both with thinkpad fan control which is "plug and play" if you download the packages from: http://code.google.com/p/tpfanco/

This "tpfanco" project attempts to revive thinkpad fan control, and they sucseed (?) in my opinion, no need for tweaking or file editing with these packages. Mint is based closely on Ubuntu, so I would guess that it would work equally well with Mint as with Ubuntu.

Another great project is "Remastersys"; http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/

It enables you to make an ISO of your actual system, with your settings, the programs you have installed etc. and burn it to a dvd.

I back up all my data folders (documents, pictures, films, music etc.) to an external HDD with "deja-dup". This back-up program comes pre-installed with ubuntu and is really easy to use, "one button". Then I make a backup of my system, everything exluding my data files, with remastersys, making a bootable dvd of my system.

I have tried this the adventurous way by wiping my entire hdd, reinstalling my system with the remastersys dvd and restoring my data files with deja-dup and I got everything back exactly like it was before.

If you run more than one computer and want to sync data I can recommend "Unison". I use it to sync all my data folders between my two computers mentioned above and between the T61 and a T43 I use as file and printer server. I sync trough my wireless router with ssh.

Elchund

Thank you Elchund! tpfanco installed and works like a charm. Now I just need to tweak the settings as there is no submitted profile for my machine.

I am going to try Unison later as I'd like to sync files between my NAS (which will serve as the 'master' library ) and my other machines.

Also, for Windows users, I came across this for controlling your Thinkpad fan:
http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

Are there any advantages to installing the ATI proprietary drivers for the X1400 video card? Or is the open source driver faster and more stable?

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.24.8.html

Last month I made a usbkey with MINT 11 LXDE to run an old diskless x41t

It is lightweight, responsive, the theme is great, icon pack is apple-delicious ; everything loads fast even on an old 4Gb usbkey. Web, videos, audio, office there's a nice app for everything.

Everything felt just right, no clutter, no useless eyecandy, well adjusted .. to this day I'm still impressed by the team taste and insights in building this distro. I can't wait to see MINT 12 LXDE (work started last month , should be finished early 2012).

After looking for a way to partition my main HD to have Mint boot with the Windows bootloader (would still rather have that to preserve RnR), and then try to get Lion on there too, I gave up and just installed Mint 11 LXDE to a drive in my Ultrabay.

It's beautiful and fast, and there's simply no way I would ever have another PC and not have a dual-boot with it.

If only Lion was as easy to install....but of course, it's not supposed to be.

In regards to a simple Paint Shop Pro-like graphics editor, I found exactly that in Pinta.

The version in the Ubuntu repositories is old. The newest version (1.1) is a significant step forward from what I've read and can be downloaded with instructions from the main project site at http://pinta-project.com/

I have also used Lubuntu (Ubuntu with LXDE) to breath new life into several old machines that could not deal with XP, but work VERY well with Lubuntu. I am writing this on an X1 Tablet that was simply useless with XP, and is great with Lubuntu, although I am having trouble keeping the wireless working, even though under XP the same hardware is fine. So tehre is still room for improvement.
For playing with images, you might enjoy ImageJ. You might also try the Ubuntu software center (Lubuntu has its own version), where the apps are sorted into several categories for easy browsing.

I have a few X20s that I use for various purposes around the house, including download / newsgroup / file-transfer machine, etc and a few "tv / movie" viewers.

For the X20s that I don't expect to use with a GUI (such as download machine), I use ubuntu server so it is installed without any X-Windows. It's really fast, stable and reliable even at 128MB RAM.

All the other X20s that I need to interact with using a GUI I run Mint LXDE. It's light-weight and it works. I did try a few other Mint flavours but only the LXDE would install on a machine with so little RAM.

I am loving the LXDE.

The only Windows flavour that runs on these machines in a tolerable manner is XP with service pack 1. Any higher than service pack 1, and I find the system becomes completely inoperable.

dmdsoftware wrote: For the X20s that I don't expect to use with a GUI (such as download machine), I use ubuntu server so it is installed without any X-Windows. It's really fast, stable and reliable even at 128MB RAM.

Just wondering, but if you don't need a GUI, why did you choose Ubuntu?

ThinkRob wrote:
Just wondering, but if you don't need a GUI, why did you choose Ubuntu?

I was always aware of Debian offering versions of their distribution that could be installed without an X-Windows environment. Debian and Ubuntu are the only two distributions I know that support installing without X-Windows. I've used Slackware and Mandrake in the past without GUIs, but haven't touched them for a long time. In 2005, I got caught up with Ubuntu and its 'always fresh' 6 month release cycle. Of course, since they I've realized how that can be also a bad thing (for stability), so I've gone back to using distributions that are based of Debian such as Linux Mint. But Linux Mint doesn't support GUI-less installs. So I simply left the older X20 machines that already had Ubuntu installed as-is.

From a maintenance perspective, it's easier to keep all your machines on the same distribution, and better yet something that has rolling updates (why I like Debian) as opposed to new dot releases every 6 months.

dmdsoftware wrote:[
From a maintenance perspective, it's easier to keep all your machines on the same distribution

That certainly makes sense. I wasn't challenging your choice, I was just curious. I figured the answer might be that. Same reason that a lot of business boxes I deal with run RHEL...

and better yet something that has rolling updates (why I like Debian) as opposed to new dot releases every 6 months.

Huh? Debian doesn't offer a rolling release (at least not until CUT is live and official.)

ThinkRob wrote: From a maintenance perspective, it's easier to keep all your machines on the same distribution

That certainly makes sense. I wasn't challenging your choice, I was just curious. I figured the answer might be that. Same reason that a lot of business boxes I deal with run RHEL...

Huh? Debian doesn't offer a rolling release (at least not until CUT is live and official.)[/quote]

I've been trying to find the best distro, and I just end up having all my computers on different distros, and I find it a challenge to ever move forward as I always seem to be fixing something. My theory now is that if I stick to one distro, I only have to learn how to tweak it once

Mint LMDE differentiates itself from Mint Ubuntu that they have rolling releases instead of incremental releases. Maybe I'm getting the term wrong? What I like is that, in theory, I'll never have to install another "upgrade" release. But of course I need to be very careful watching the updates "roll in" or I could end up even more time trying to figure out why something that was working yesterday isn't working today.